BETTING ON SVT FUTURES; Ford's new hands have big plans for in-house tuner brand.(special vehicle team's Hau Thai-Tang and Phil Martens of Ford Motor Co.)

Byline: BOB GRITZINGER

Maybe all the fretting, all the online chatter, all the enthusiast gnashing of teeth about the future of Ford's Special Vehicle Team is unwarranted. Maybe we are just seeing a lull in production at that granddaddy of domestic in-house performance tuners.

"I hope so, or else I'm out of a job,'' says Ford engineer Hau Thai-Tang, the newly named director of SVT, replacing SVT icon John Coletti who retired at the end of 2004.

Something tells us Thai-Tang, the Vietnamese native who recently completed his self-described dream job-as chief engineer on the 2005 Mustang development team-won't hurt for work anytime soon. But whether that work focuses on future SVT vehicles, and what form those products might take, remains to be seen.

Rest assured, though, Thai-Tang and his boss, Ford product creation vice president Phil Martens (himself a relative newbie, having just taken control of the product leadership position at Ford after the Dec. 1 retirement of engineering whiz Chris Theodore), are saying the right things.

Martens will admit he was getting upward of 15 letters a day from alarmed SVT faithful after Coletti's retirement announcement. But his answers to them:

* "SVT is actually bigger, staff-wise, than ever before.''